Calmamity:EvilEgg: Wouldn't the manufacturers just say "great!" and add a second shift or something?

As I understand it, the manufacturers are all running at full capacity (supposedly), and the next step would be building new facilities, which none of them are willing to roll the dice on.

I want someone knowledgeable to explain this to me...

The ammo plants have been running at maximum capacity for YEARS now. Since Obama took office, they've been running extra shifts and cranking out huge quantities of ammo. In the last 5 months it went full retard - one of my nephews who works at Walmart said that a skid of ammo came in and people were taking vacation days to come in and buy the maximum allowed, once word got to them. One guy brought in his 5 year old and 7 year old to try to buy extra ammo under their names (no-go, not even at Walmart).

So who is stockpiling all of this? Joe Bob can't possibly be hoarding 250,000 rounds of 22LR in his basement. So is all the ammo winding up with shadowy consortiums? Speculators? And there just aren't enough ranges in the US to burn this much.

tuna fingers:Mimic_Octopus: crazy huh ? care to tell me where all the target grade and price 9mm and .40S&W has been for the past farking year then asshole ? Dont tell me the gun nuts are buying it, they are forced to spend goddamned $500 a case on tactical hollow points since a box of regular FMJ has not hit a shelf since last summer. A little expensive to practice to proficiency at that rate wouldn't you say ?

Any shortage is due to people like you scared of your own shadows. Funny little circle of fear you've brought upon yourselves.

i'm not scared of anything you idiot, where the fark did this retarded talking point come from ? the same rejects in tight jeans that came up with sports car or hummer = small dick ? . and it is not supply and demand, it is not even making it to the shelf to be bought.

ZeroPly:Calmamity: EvilEgg: Wouldn't the manufacturers just say "great!" and add a second shift or something?

As I understand it, the manufacturers are all running at full capacity (supposedly), and the next step would be building new facilities, which none of them are willing to roll the dice on.

I want someone knowledgeable to explain this to me...

The ammo plants have been running at maximum capacity for YEARS now. Since Obama took office, they've been running extra shifts and cranking out huge quantities of ammo. In the last 5 months it went full retard - one of my nephews who works at Walmart said that a skid of ammo came in and people were taking vacation days to come in and buy the maximum allowed, once word got to them. One guy brought in his 5 year old and 7 year old to try to buy extra ammo under their names (no-go, not even at Walmart).

So who is stockpiling all of this? Joe Bob can't possibly be hoarding 250,000 rounds of 22LR in his basement. So is all the ammo winding up with shadowy consortiums? Speculators? And there just aren't enough ranges in the US to burn this much.

ModernLuddite:I know that I'm about 200 years behind here, but damn it seems like America wakes up to each new day and somehow manages to get more retarded.

That's actually impressive.

Americans excel at retardation so much so that we've scientifically increased the brains retardation capacity. Your typical human would die from exposure to just 30% the amount of retardation an American brain has.

Shvetz:detritus: Except the DHS has been buying a ridiculous amount of hollow point ammo under the Obama administration, and good luck finding any on the shelves right now. Regardless of the intent, the industry has not been able to keep up with civilian demand.

This is why the NRA is not against it. The NRA has become a lobbying arm of the firearm and ammo industries. Anyways, why exactly do people need hollow point rounds for self defense?

Are you suggesting that people don't use the most effective self-defense round for self-defense?

Mimic_Octopus:tuna fingers: Mimic_Octopus: crazy huh ? care to tell me where all the target grade and price 9mm and .40S&W has been for the past farking year then asshole ? Dont tell me the gun nuts are buying it, they are forced to spend goddamned $500 a case on tactical hollow points since a box of regular FMJ has not hit a shelf since last summer. A little expensive to practice to proficiency at that rate wouldn't you say ?

Any shortage is due to people like you scared of your own shadows. Funny little circle of fear you've brought upon yourselves.

i'm not scared of anything you idiot, where the fark did this retarded talking point come from ? the same rejects in tight jeans that came up with sports car or hummer = small dick ? . and it is not supply and demand, it is not even making it to the shelf to be bought.

Sure it is. The demand is just far surpassing the supply. There are many more stores in the game (because they can make a lot of money off of suckers who are hoarding) and online sales are increasing. Same amount of ammo through more distribution channels leads to a false sense of scarcity. Economics 101.

ZeroPly:So who is stockpiling all of this? Joe Bob can't possibly be hoarding 250,000 rounds of 22LR in his basement. So is all the ammo winding up with shadowy consortiums? Speculators? And there just aren't enough ranges in the US to burn this much.

There's a fair amount of people "flipping" ammo for a profit on sites like GunBroker.com. It's annoying for legitimate, non-panicky buyers, as it cuts out regular supply and raises prices on what's available.

It wouldn't surprise me if people are stockpiling what ammo they can get.

GUTSU:Shvetz: detritus: Except the DHS has been buying a ridiculous amount of hollow point ammo under the Obama administration, and good luck finding any on the shelves right now. Regardless of the intent, the industry has not been able to keep up with civilian demand.

This is why the NRA is not against it. The NRA has become a lobbying arm of the firearm and ammo industries. Anyways, why exactly do people need hollow point rounds for self defense?

Are you suggesting that people don't use the most effective self-defense round for self-defense?

How often are these guys getting robbed that they need thousands of rounds of hollow points?

heypete:ZeroPly: So who is stockpiling all of this? Joe Bob can't possibly be hoarding 250,000 rounds of 22LR in his basement. So is all the ammo winding up with shadowy consortiums? Speculators? And there just aren't enough ranges in the US to burn this much.

There's a fair amount of people "flipping" ammo for a profit on sites like GunBroker.com. It's annoying for legitimate, non-panicky buyers, as it cuts out regular supply and raises prices on what's available.

It wouldn't surprise me if people are stockpiling what ammo they can get.

/wishes people would stop panic-buying

The outcome of buyers not waiting for seasonal sales or hunting season specials or rebates is that manufacturers will never again feel that they need to have seasonal sales or hunting season specials or rebates.

For all you regular hunters out there paying top dollar, thank a right wing gun nut.

When Senator Imhofe-hotep is not holding the fort against imaginary bands of environmentalists plotting to rape and scalp you, he's holding the fort aganst imaginary bands of socialist Sekret Muslims plotting to take your guns and then join the commie environmentalsts in raping and scalping you.

There goes the last shred of credibility that the man might have had at some point before whoring himself to the Koch Brothers or whoever it is that owns the fossil fuel reserves of the Great State of Oklahomo, where the bull shiat is as high as an elephant's arse.

IMHOFE, PEOPLE. IT'S THE SAME GUY. HE HAS ZERO CREDIBILITY AND MAKES FOX NEWS LOOK LIKE GOSPEL.

Give it a shot, so to speak. You might have some difficulty finding supplies in the current market, but in general it can make shooting uncommon, expensive ammo considerably cheaper. If you're shooting in competitions, you can make match-grade ammo cheaper and more consistently than commercial match ammo.

In ordinary market conditions, I can reload 5.56mm NATO ammo using higher-quality components for about half the retail price of common factory loads.

/just be sure to verify the reloading recipe from two independent sources to make sure its sensible and not dangerous//don't smoke around gunpowder

Same thing happened to rice a few years ago. Artificial shortage. There never actually was any, but due to people thinking there was, herd mentality kicked in. They bought up more rice than they needed in a panic, thus creating an actual shortage.

heypeteLoki-L: To be fair, if there was such a conspiracy, the NRA who is wholly in the pocket of the gun and ammunition manufacturers would naturally be in on it since it would make their bosses money.

Care to show a citation for your claim about the NRA being in the pocket of gun & ammo makers?According to their tax records about half their annual income is from things like advertising (they have several magazines and publications in which they sell ad space)

Not being in the US, I've sever seen any NRA publications.But if I had to take a wild guess at what industries a gun club magazine sells most of its ad space to, I wouldn't put flowers and make-up at the top of my list.

/ well, unless the make-up and flowers are part of a camouflage supply set

Bashar and Asma's Infinite Playlist:GUTSU: Shvetz: detritus: Except the DHS has been buying a ridiculous amount of hollow point ammo under the Obama administration, and good luck finding any on the shelves right now. Regardless of the intent, the industry has not been able to keep up with civilian demand.

This is why the NRA is not against it. The NRA has become a lobbying arm of the firearm and ammo industries. Anyways, why exactly do people need hollow point rounds for self defense?

Are you suggesting that people don't use the most effective self-defense round for self-defense?

How often are these guys getting robbed that they need thousands of rounds of hollow points?

It's quite common for people to take training courses and practice using the same ammo as they would use in a self-defense situation because it allows them to become accustomed to how the ammo performs (different types of ammo have varying recoil), ensure that it's reliable in their gun (due to the bullet shape, hollowpoints can occasionally run into feeding issues that FMJ bullets don't), etc.

Certain companies like Speer offer training ammo that's ballistically identical to their self-defense loads but use cheaper FMJ bullets for training, but not all companies do this.

heypete:ZeroPly: So who is stockpiling all of this? Joe Bob can't possibly be hoarding 250,000 rounds of 22LR in his basement. So is all the ammo winding up with shadowy consortiums? Speculators? And there just aren't enough ranges in the US to burn this much.

There's a fair amount of people "flipping" ammo for a profit on sites like GunBroker.com. It's annoying for legitimate, non-panicky buyers, as it cuts out regular supply and raises prices on what's available.

It wouldn't surprise me if people are stockpiling what ammo they can get.

/wishes people would stop panic-buying

Without getting into all the politics, this doesn't make sense to me from a strictly economic viewpoint...

Panic buying (generators, food, bottled water, back hoes, etc) is always short term as far as I know. How can you possibly have a panic buy that lasts years? The barrier to entry to set up a new ammo plant can't be that high, that an established player can't do it. We're not talking about a nuclear plant here - just machining lines.

We should have hit saturation years ago. The only explanation is that people are hoarding. But even with hoarding, there are limits. IIRC 22LR production is something like 2 billion rounds per year. That's 80 rounds for every person in the US, of whom the overwhelming majority don't even shoot regularly.

heypete:Bashar and Asma's Infinite Playlist: How often are these guys getting robbed that they need thousands of rounds of hollow points?

It's quite common for people to take training courses and practice using the same ammo as they would use in a self-defense situation because it allows them to become accustomed to how the ammo performs (different types of ammo have varying recoil), ensure that it's reliable in their gun (due to the bullet shape, hollowpoints can occasionally run into feeding issues that FMJ bullets don't), etc.

Certain companies like Speer offer training ammo that's ballistically identical to their self-defense loads but use cheaper FMJ bullets for training, but not all companies do this.

I'm just taking issue with the argument that these types of ammo are predominately used for self defence. Do you really think that 51% of hollow points are fired in self defence? Seems our yearly body counts would be more ridiculous than they already are were that the case.

ZeroPly:heypete: ZeroPly: So who is stockpiling all of this? Joe Bob can't possibly be hoarding 250,000 rounds of 22LR in his basement. So is all the ammo winding up with shadowy consortiums? Speculators? And there just aren't enough ranges in the US to burn this much.

There's a fair amount of people "flipping" ammo for a profit on sites like GunBroker.com. It's annoying for legitimate, non-panicky buyers, as it cuts out regular supply and raises prices on what's available.

It wouldn't surprise me if people are stockpiling what ammo they can get.

/wishes people would stop panic-buying

Without getting into all the politics, this doesn't make sense to me from a strictly economic viewpoint...

Panic buying (generators, food, bottled water, back hoes, etc) is always short term as far as I know. How can you possibly have a panic buy that lasts years? The barrier to entry to set up a new ammo plant can't be that high, that an established player can't do it. We're not talking about a nuclear plant here - just machining lines.

We should have hit saturation years ago. The only explanation is that people are hoarding. But even with hoarding, there are limits. IIRC 22LR production is something like 2 billion rounds per year. That's 80 rounds for every person in the US, of whom the overwhelming majority don't even shoot regularly.

Its probably a combination of old hoarders, new hoarders, new gun owners, and new gun owners who have become new hoarders and new gun owners doing a lot more shooting. Ammunition acts like a perishable and non-perishable item depending on the market and buyer.

It is clear that every single round put on the shelf is being purchased. It is also clear that a lot of ammo is being put on the market. Are you suggesting that the supply is going somewhere else? Where do you think it is going?

The Voice of Doom:Not being in the US, I've sever seen any NRA publications.But if I had to take a wild guess at what industries a gun club magazine sells most of its ad space to, I wouldn't put flowers and make-up at the top of my list.

Their Form 990s are public record and will tell you all you need to know about their finances (including profit and loss on the NRA cafe). Membership dues alone are about half. Money from all gun industry sources is way less, even if you assume a healthy percentage of their advertising is from there (which it probably is, to be fair).

The government doesn't have money to spend on crap like billions of bullets.

That's reason enough to curb how much they can horde.

Is the government trying to make it difficult to get ammo? Hard to say. It's really not likely, but it's plausible. The government doesn't have a sterling record and our bureacrats in these particular agencies can be jackasses.

I mean, Fast and Furious is thousands of times more evil, so this is peanuts.

Anyway, time to abolish more than a few of the agencies while capping budgets all around.

The Voice of Doom:Not being in the US, I've sever seen any NRA publications.But if I had to take a wild guess at what industries a gun club magazine sells most of its ad space to, I wouldn't put flowers and make-up at the top of my list.

/ well, unless the make-up and flowers are part of a camouflage supply set

Now that is a mental image. :)

That said, you're absolutely right: quite a lot of the ads in their publications are for firearms-related products (guns, ammo, optics, accessories, etc.). As you say, it makes sense: the people who subscribe are clearly interested in such things, so it's sensible for them to advertise in those publications.

Still, that's a normal business relationship. Half of the NRA's annual income is from membership dues, and that's the largest single component of their income. Of course, the interests of industry and consumers align and overlap in many ways (people want to legally buy guns and associated products and services, and industry wants to sell them), but that doesn't mean that the NRA's in thrall to the industry.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) is the actual industry trade group for the firearms industry, and they're unaffiliated with the NRA.

The government is buying a lot of ammunition. Clearly more ammunition than normal. It just isn't a conspiracy, it is a coincidence. I am guessing that it is the perfect storm of two things..... They had contracts in place that were expiring soon that let them purchase at the pre-crazy prices, and they needed to get the orders in before the sequester kicked in.

Molavian:notto: kortex: Fark is so very liberal these days. It almost makes me want to stop reading the site. Sadly, I enjoy the humor.

Reality has a liberal bias.

No, it doesn't. Your perception of reality is distorted by your liberal bias.

Today's Fark is way left of center. Fark of yesteryear was much more centrist in dispensing snark.

That'll happen when you define "center" as a fixed distance from yourself in either direction rather than the actual median of contemporary political views (as if one axis was sufficient to begin with).

It's quite common for people to take training courses and practice using the same ammo as they would use in a self-defense situation because it allows them to become accustomed to how the ammo performs (different types of ammo have varying recoil), ensure that it's reliable in their gun (due to the bullet shape, hollowpoints can occasionally run into feeding issues that FMJ bullets don't), etc.

Certain companies like Speer offer training ammo that's ballistically identical to their self-defense loads but use cheaper FMJ bullets for training, but not all companies do this.

I'm just taking issue with the argument that these types of ammo are predominately used for self defence. Do you really think that 51% of hollow points are fired in self defence? Seems our yearly body counts would be more ridiculous than they already are were that the case.

The point is not that they're getting fired at people. It's that you fire thousands of them a year at the range making sure you don't suck the one time you might need to fire half a dozen at a person.

(The math adds up quick. If you shoot 100 rounds a week at the range, over a year you'll blow through over 5000 rounds. Guys like my dad who shoot competitively may run through many, many times that.)

Bashar and Asma's Infinite Playlist:I'm just taking issue with the argument that these types of ammo are predominately used for self defence. Do you really think that 51% of hollow points are fired in self defence? Seems our yearly body counts would be more ridiculous than they already are were that the case.

Certainly not: the vast majority of hollowpoints are used at the range for training or sit in magazines or boxes for later use.

The point is that hollowpoints are an effective round for self-defense, so it makes sense that people would buy them for that purpose. It also makes sense that people would use that same ammo for training and practice so they would be reasonable prepared and well-trained in case they ever needed to use their gun in self-defense.

But seriously, people, Cheaperthandirt.com has NO .32 ACP ammo AT ALL. That's not a cop or military round; it's not even a very good self defense round. The old lady runs it through her Walther PPK when we got to the range, and I don't want to have to buy 1,000 rounds just to be able to buy it at all.

J. Frank Parnell:Inflatable Rhetoric: Anyone who was ever in the military knows the "citizens" don't have a hope of standing up against them.1 minigun would settle all the discussions.

Or an Apache helicopter from miles away, like in all those FLIR videos from the middle east. Many of those guys have AKs too, and a lot of good it does them.

Yes, you're a very clever fellow -- in a standard battle guys with small arms are going to lose against drones or assault aircraft. Which is why if, God forbid, it ever came down to it, that's exactly the kind of battle you would rarely see. Insurgent tactics are not a black art -- what you would see a lot of is infiltration and sabotage by the rebels and police-style raids by the official forces. Also don't forget that there are significant elements within the police and military that will simply refuse to go to outright war against their own countrymen.

The balance shifts radically when you plug the same numbers into an insurgency scenario (with large numbers of defectors) instead of a straight battlefield conflict. It's called asymmetrical warfare for a reason.

heypete:Bashar and Asma's Infinite Playlist: I'm just taking issue with the argument that these types of ammo are predominately used for self defence. Do you really think that 51% of hollow points are fired in self defence? Seems our yearly body counts would be more ridiculous than they already are were that the case.

Certainly not: the vast majority of hollowpoints are used at the range for training or sit in magazines or boxes for later use.

The point is that hollowpoints are an effective round for self-defense, so it makes sense that people would buy them for that purpose. It also makes sense that people would use that same ammo for training and practice so they would be reasonable prepared and well-trained in case they ever needed to use their gun in self-defense.

Is the way a hollow point handles while firing in a self defence situation (relatively close combat) so markedly different from normal ammunition? It's an honest question. I don't really care one way or another what sorts of ammo are flying off the shelves. The whole thing just seems odd to me unless someone is expecting to have to use deadly force at range to defend themselves, where all of a bullet's idiosyncrasies come into play.

An extra spread of a few millimeters isn't going to mean much over 5-10 feet.

Mimic_Octopus:crazy huh ? care to tell me where all the target grade and price 9mm and .40S&W has been for the past farking year then asshole ? Dont tell me the gun nuts are buying it, they are forced to spend goddamned $500 a case on tactical hollow points since a box of regular FMJ has not hit a shelf since last summer. A little expensive to practice to proficiency at that rate wouldn't you say ?

Bashar and Asma's Infinite Playlist:Is the way a hollow point handles while firing in a self defence situation (relatively close combat) so markedly different from normal ammunition? It's an honest question. I don't really care one way or another what sorts of ammo are flying off the shelves. The whole thing just seems odd to me unless someone is expecting to have to use deadly force at range to defend themselves, where all of a bullet's idiosyncrasies come into play.

An extra spread of a few millimeters isn't going to mean much over 5-10 feet.

Perhaps you're confusing hollowpoint ammo (which expands in diameter after striking tissue) with shotshells, which consist of a bunch of separate pellets that spread out over distance. If not, I may be misinterpreting your question.

Hollowpoints have significant advantages in self-defense situations: ordinary, full metal jacket pullets can easily overpenetrate a bad guy, causing relatively minor injuries. Additionally, they can penetrate a surprising number of interior walls and pose more of a risk to bystanders. Hollowpoints expand on impact, allowing them to dissipate much more energy into the target (e.g. a bad guy) rather than just going "through-and-through". Since they're more likely to stop within the target, the risk of overpenetration is significantly lessened. They also are less likely to penetrate walls and pose less of a risk to bystanders.

In short, yes, hollowpoint ammo has significantly different characteristics than ordinary, full metal jacket ammo in regards to self-defense situations that make it more effective for self-defense and less of a risk to bystanders.

notto:ZeroPly: heypete: ZeroPly: So who is stockpiling all of this? Joe Bob can't possibly be hoarding 250,000 rounds of 22LR in his basement. So is all the ammo winding up with shadowy consortiums? Speculators? And there just aren't enough ranges in the US to burn this much.

There's a fair amount of people "flipping" ammo for a profit on sites like GunBroker.com. It's annoying for legitimate, non-panicky buyers, as it cuts out regular supply and raises prices on what's available.

It wouldn't surprise me if people are stockpiling what ammo they can get.

/wishes people would stop panic-buying

Without getting into all the politics, this doesn't make sense to me from a strictly economic viewpoint...

Panic buying (generators, food, bottled water, back hoes, etc) is always short term as far as I know. How can you possibly have a panic buy that lasts years? The barrier to entry to set up a new ammo plant can't be that high, that an established player can't do it. We're not talking about a nuclear plant here - just machining lines.

We should have hit saturation years ago. The only explanation is that people are hoarding. But even with hoarding, there are limits. IIRC 22LR production is something like 2 billion rounds per year. That's 80 rounds for every person in the US, of whom the overwhelming majority don't even shoot regularly.

Its probably a combination of old hoarders, new hoarders, new gun owners, and new gun owners who have become new hoarders and new gun owners doing a lot more shooting. Ammunition acts like a perishable and non-perishable item depending on the market and buyer.

It is clear that every single round put on the shelf is being purchased. It is also clear that a lot of ammo is being put on the market. Are you suggesting that the supply is going somewhere else? Where do you think it is going?

Beats me. If everyone were hoarding at a high rate, this would make sense. But anecdotally speaking, I know plenty of gun owners, but not a single one who is hoarding ammo beyond a sensible stock. So there must be hoarders out there with literally millions of rounds. But then that doesn't make sense because if the manufacturers decided "enough is enough", and started up some new plants, ammo prices would drop like a stone as everyone unloaded their excess stock.